Book list
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*Starred Review* In 1904, Hanna Lundmark, a young widow from poverty-stricken northern Sweden, arrives in Lourenco Marques, a coastal town in Portuguese East Africa. Following a series of unexpected events, she becomes the owner of a prosperous brothel of black prostitutes. Her new environment proves difficult to navigate, particularly its blatant racism. Nobody knows what to make of a rich white businesswoman, either. Black-white relations, evoked with subtle skill and mordant humor, are marked by mutual incomprehension and fear, and Hanna's attempts at friendliness and generosity toward her employees are met with unnatural silences. When she obeys her conscience and makes a gutsy decision against bigotry, the plot takes turns at once surprising and not. Mankell, Scandinavian crime fiction's brightest star, structures his latest around a true story from turn-of-the-century Mozambique. Considerable suspense derives from the tense atmosphere and the fact that neither Hanna nor the reader knows quite what will happen next. The tragic effects of colonialism in this divided land emerge slowly via a succession of shocking reveals. This powerful work boasts a courageous, well-drawn heroine and makes its points without stridency or didacticism. Since it's written by Mankell, an author of such high stature, it should get the large audience it deserves.--Johnson, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal
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Mankell, who as author or the Kurt Wallander mysteries leads his contemporaries in the bountiful territory of Scandinavian noir, here leaps far into magical realism. Hanna begins life in icy poverty in turn-of-the-20th-century rural Sweden. When her mother insists that she head into the world, Hannah becomes a cook on a ship headed for Australia; she marries an officer, is widowed, jumps ship in Africa, becomes deadly ill at a "hotel," recovers, marries the "hotel's" owner, and is soon widowed again. This time, though, she is left immensely wealthy, and her greatest asset, the "hotel," is actually a flourishing brothel. Soon, Hanna becomes Ana and copes with identity quests (personal, geographic, racial) in a colonial Africa where racism is a given-except that Ana deviates, showing compassionate concern for the black prostitutes, a black woman who murders her white "husband," and an odd "best friend" named Carlos (read the book to find out). Though not initially a page-turner, the book soon becomes one, and vivid descriptions of both lush living and abject poverty abound. The ending? Magical. Verdict For lovers of historical fiction with a twist and of Mankell's oeuvre, although this is more Barry Unsworth (or Joseph Conrad) than Jo Nesbo. [See Prepub Alert, 1/21/13.]-Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Basing his work on a sliver of early 20th-century tax records in Mozambique, Mankell, who's best known for his series of mysteries featuring Kurt Wallender, has fashioned the story of Hannah Renstrom Lundmark Vaz. At age 19, Hannah leaves Sweden as cook on a ship bound for Australia. A whirlwind courtship with a crew member finds her married and widowed within two months of leaving home and leads her to abandon ship in Lourenco Marques. She stays at what she thinks is a cheap hotel, though she soon realizes it is a highly successful bordello, whose owner, Vaz, proposes to her. Shortly after their marriage, he also dies, leaving Hannah very wealthy and in charge of his business and investments. The area's rampant racism bothers Hannah and is the cause of some unpopular actions that don't always fit with her seeming detachment. Rosalyn Landor does a wonderful job with the narration, especially with the Swedish personal and place names; her reading of Hannah is effectively remote. VERDICT Recommend to fans of Paul Theroux, The Bean Trees, or books set in colonial Africa.-Suanne Roush, Seminole, FL (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly
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Through an odd series of circumstances, Hanna Lundmark escapes from poverty and, eventually, finds herself the owner of a prestigious brothel in Mozambique in the first decade of the 20th century. But racial strife and colonialism make this world foreign in ways Hanna cannot possibly understand, despite her growing influence in the city. When she attempts to intervene on a black woman's behalf, she quickly learns how cultural tensions can result in bloodshed. Rosalyn Landor narrates with a majestic, British-accented voice. She navigates the prose well, skillfully capturing the voice and viewpoint of Hanna. Landor also lends the book's other characters voices that are distinct and authentic, and her pacing and inflection add to the suspense of Mankell's prose. A Knopf hardcover. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly
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Africa features prominently in the work of Mankell (The Shadow Girls), both in his acclaimed Wallander mysteries and his many stand-alone books, including this fine historical set in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) in the early 20th century. Having no prospects, Hanna Lundmark (nee Renstrom) is sent away to find work as a cook on a ship sailing for Australia, where she falls for an officer who dies on the voyage. Once docked in Lourenco Marques, the young widow finds her way to a hotel/brothel owned by Senhor Vaz, whose proposal of marriage Hannah accepts. When he too dies, Hannah inherits his brothel and tries to make sense of her life and the world. Like many Mankell novels, the plot seems strange, even incredible, in summary form, but his gift lies in the creation of a sequence of events that is credible and illuminating. The proverbial stranger in a strange land, Hanna is the lens that exposes the ugly realities of racism, sexism, and colonialism-easy targets, obviously, but this book is very much of a piece with Mankell's nongenre, and more polemical, works. Hanna is a curious mix of helplessness and fortitude, and her story, like the story of Africa itself, is tragically sad. Agent: Anneli Hoier, Leonhardt & Hoier. (July 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus
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The chronicler of Kurt Wallander (The Troubled Man, 2011, etc.) sets his sights on something dramatically different: the African odyssey of a young turn-of-the-century Swedish woman that's based on facts--just not very many facts. Five years after her lumberjack father's death in 1899, Hanna Renstrm's mother, Elin, sends the 18-year-old off to businessman Jonathan Forsman's home in coastal Sundsvall, where the chances of survival look brighter. Forsman not only treats Hanna kindly and respectfully and gives her a job as a maid, but arranges her passage to Australia as a higher-salaried cook on a ship he partly owns. Hanna finds love aboard the Lovisa, but barely a month into her marriage to third mate Lars Lundmark, a fever carries him off. Armed with 50 in widow's benefits, and lacking any strong ties to the ship or its destination, Hanna decides on the spur of the moment to steal away while the Lovisa is docked one night in Loureno Marques and runs smack into another world. When she finds that she's seriously ill, she begs help from women she thinks run a hotel. They're actually prostitutes in Senhor Attimilio Vaz's brothel, O Paraiso, and he's the highest-contributing taxpayer in all of Mozambique. Here, Hanna once again finds unexpected kindness and romance even before she ends up as the owner of O Paraiso, but this time, the world in which she's landed is shot through with a racism so pervasive that it defines every human relationship, and Hanna's closest and most enduring emotional connection turns out to be with Carlos the monkey. Hanna's adventures, based on elliptical hints from the journal of a real-life Swedish madam in 1905 Mozambique, make a story as magical as a fairy tale and just about as brutal too.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.